A helicopter rescued six miners from a Taiwan quarry on Thursday as rescuers attempted to liberate scores of others trapped in highway tunnels following the island’s biggest earthquake in a quarter-century.
Nine people were killed and over 1,000 injured in Wednesday’s magnitude-7.4 quake, but strict construction regulations and widespread public disaster awareness appear to have prevented a major catastrophe on the island.
Dozens of inhabitants of the worst-hit city spent a night outdoors rather than in apartments still shaking from tremors, and a large engineering operation was underway to restore damaged roads and prop up tilting structures.
Since the first quake, the island has been rattled by more than 300 severe aftershocks, and the government has advised people to be cautious of landslides or rockfalls if they walk into the countryside for Qingming, a two-day public holiday that began Thursday.
During the holiday, families traditionally visit their ancestors’ gravesites to clean them and burn offerings.
“Do not go to the mountains unless necessary”, President Tsai Ing-wen advised in a late-night message.
According to the most estimates from the National Disaster Agency, the quake killed nine people and injured 1,050 others.
Authorities were in communication with 101 persons trapped in tunnels or cut-off regions but had lost contact with another 46, who were thought to be safe.
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